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With aesthetics becoming almost as important a factor in usability and performance when it comes to buying a laptop these days, manufacturers are using teams of consultants to get the design just right for a particular market before they even start putting the parts together. Business users will be looking for something that projects a corporate image of sleek efficiency, often in matt black, whereas teenagers will be more interested in bright colours and funky originality, and there is a whole raft of different requirements in between. Laptop news covers the latest designs in innovative laptops to hit the market in recent months.

Notebooks are becoming increasingly lighter and thinner, and taking on the role of fashion accessories to project a personal image as well as sophisticated machines for processing data and keeping in touch with friends and colleagues.

Intel's Core-i technology is at the heart of the laptop revolution, with these ultra-fast and ultra-small microprocessors allowing for ever-smaller designs and increased performance. They are fitted into a whole range of electronic devices apart from laptops, from digital signs to automated machines. Fitting them into laptops allows the kit to work anywhere up to three times faster than those using the Core 2 technology of older ranges.........

can we rally hear the light?

University of Utah researchers used invisible infrared light to make rat heart cells contract and toadfish inner-ear cells send signals to the brain. The discovery someday might improve cochlear implants for deafness and lead to devices to restore vision, maintain balance and treat movement disorders like Parkinson's.

"We're going to talk to the brain with optical infrared pulses instead of electrical pulses," which now are used in cochlear implants to provide deaf people with limited hearing, says Richard Rabbitt, a professor of bioengineering and senior author of the heart-cell and inner-ear-cell studies published this month in The Journal of Physiology

The studies � funded by the National Institutes of Health � also raise the possibility of developing cardiac pacemakers that use optical signals rather than electrical signals to stimulate heart cells. But Rabbitt says that because electronic pacemakers work well, "I don't see a market for an optical pacemaker at the present time".

The scientific significance of the studies is the discovery that optical signals � short pulses of an invisible wavelength of infrared laser light delivered via a thin, glass optical fiber � can activate heart cells and inner-ear cells correlation to balance and hearing.........